July 30, 2019

Who Has the Most Rats?

One of my regular readers emailed this morning to say that “Surely the rat population of American cities needs to be graphically represented!” Obviously he’s got my number, but rats? Where the hell am I going to find data about rat infestation?

Well, bizarrely enough, this is a question on the American Housing Survey. Here are the top 15 cities plus Baltimore:

Sadly, intellectual honesty forces me to publish this chart even though it confirms Baltimore as one of the rattiest cities in America. However, I’d add that two of the top five are New York, where Donald Trump lived in the past, and Washington DC, the city where he lives now. I guess rats only count if they live somewhere that a TEOC (Trump enemy of color) lives.

UPDATE: The AHS also asks about cockroaches. Oddly enough, Baltimore does much better on this measure. I suppose it must all be weather related or something.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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